


Keep Calm

by esama



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BAMF John Watson, Gen, Moving On, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 07:45:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty things John does to rebuild his life after Sherlock's fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep Calm

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on fanfiction.net on 01/24/2012  
> Proofread by Darlene and Sarah

The first thing John does, that makes a difference, is move out of Baker Street. It involves surprisingly little work, only trying to separate his things from Sherlock's, and then untangle all of that from whatever belongs to Mrs. Hudson. He's shocked, in the end, by how little he has. Because that chair had become _his chair_ , that cushion on the couch _his_ cushion, that mug _his_ tea mug. But it's all Mrs. Hudson's. A bathrobe that barely reaches his calves – Sherlock's, shrunken in an experiment – the mouse he’d worked his laptop with – also Sherlock's, borrowed and never returned. In the end, all John has is clothing, some personal hygiene products, and his laptop. That’s pretty much it, and all of it goes into a single duffle bag, the same one it had all been carried in when he’d first arrived.

The second thing John does is get rid of the gun. It's not his anymore – Sherlock used it too many times, shooting the wall, threatening Moriarty, threatening John himself, the entire world. It doesn't feel right anymore, to keep it. And, of course, once upon a time, he’d used it to save Sherlock. Having failed now… No. He can't keep it, so into the Thames it goes.

The third thing should've been finding a flat, but it's _leaving_ the flat that had already been found. Mycroft's handiwork, the second place, and John can't accept anything from Sherlock's brother just yet, because it reminds him of too many things, and he just _can't._ So, he goes to a bed-sit instead and searches for a new place – a new life, a new existence, a new John Watson that is no longer Doctor John Watson, Sherlock Holmes's colleague, companion, blogger. He finds it and it's poor, it's shabby, the roof leaks and there’s a draft and the kitchen smells, but it's not Baker Street. So it's better.

The fourth thing is sitting. Sitting silent and still and trying not to feel like the world is moving around him faster than he can keep up. And yet it is – spinning in space, around the sun in the celestial dance that Sherlock was so keen on deleting. And John feels it in his bones – how he's being left behind by everything, every single atom around him, until he can't bear it any longer.

The fifth is the very first thing he did, back what feels like ages ago. His leg twinges with familiar pain and he limps a little as he walks through the park, determined not to let his body fail him the way it threatens to – but it will, without Sherlock the leg will give in again, he knows it will. Stamford isn't there this time, but he runs into someone else. Percy Phelps, a spot of personal shame, almost walks past him, not recognising him until the last moment. "Watson?" he asks with surprise and John winces because of a past that his experiences with Sherlock put in even worse light than Afghanistan had.

The sixth thing is getting coffee with Percy – whom he used to bully back in senior school. They drink, they talk – Percy hasn't read his blog or the scandal in the papers, too busy with his work at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He's changed, nothing like the scrawny kid John had used to bully with his mates. Percy is smart, successful, maybe a bit nervous still, but regardless, he's superior to John in every way. It opens John's eyes in a way that the meeting with Stamford hadn't; "I'm attending some lectures around here part of the job to keep up with these sorts of things," Percy says, sipping his tea. "Feels like I'm forever in school, really."

The seventh thing is thinking, contemplating and, eventually, planning. Because John knows that as it is, his life is going nowhere – he's going to lose his job at the clinic the moment the intermittent tremor comes back, and it's going to, just like the limp had. After that, the pension would be all he had, and that wouldn't be enough. And besides, living the way he had before wouldn't be enough, not anymore – he can't _settle_ down like that, not after Sherlock. It would kill him by inches, as surely as the fall had killed Sherlock, and John doesn't want that,doesn't think that Sherlock would want that.

The eighth is several things. It starts with an internet search and develops into taking online lessons, doing personal research. He's gotten good at research, with Sherlock – he’d been doing that all the time, researching this and that, confirming obscure facts. The internet is now a tool in a way it hasn't ever been before, and the more he researches, the better he gets at it. And he's good at studying too, he finds, and again thanks Sherlock – Sherlock had forced him to be, with him it had always been either be a damn quick study or get left behind. So, John researches, he studies, he finds that, somewhere along the way he has developed an eye for the obscure.

Ninth is a meeting with Lestrade – who has gotten demoted, and is no longer the head of his division. Sherlock's scandal had hit him bad, of course, and Lestrade looks worse and somehow better all at once – a little more grey in his hair, but no shadows or bags beneath his eyes. Less time at the office, more to himself. "I'm thinking of retiring," he admits. John tells him where to shove that notion, and they drink a pint to an idiot genius.

The tenth thing is time. First weeks, then months, until a year has gone by and he's at Sherlock's grave again, feeling like crying, like shouting, like kicking the tombstone over, like showering it with gold. God he hates the man – and still it's like tearing bits of shrapnel out of his shoulder to leave the place. But time does more than that: it takes the online lessons and upgrades them to actual classes, on and off. It kicks him out of London, eventually, when he loses his job like he had thought he would, and makes him find a place in Surrey instead. It also cements his plans, because the more of it goes by and he does nothing, the more he wants to do something. Time doesn't heal the wounds. It turns them into scars – and John learns best from scars.

The eleventh thing comes and goes without his notice – he can't even recall when he stopped dating, just that he's no longer even trying to pull. But then, with the limp, with the cane, with the personal burdens and monsters beneath his bed, he doesn't really want to either. Mary Morstan comes along, she’s beautiful and kind and brilliant and so brave – and then she goes away again at some point, and only belatedly does John muse if she might've been _it_. He's oddly certain he's better off not knowing.

Twelfth is when classes turn into taking tests, getting qualifications. There isn't really that much to do, thanks to the fact that he already has a degree and a damn good one too – and his army history helps even more. He's, in a way, a little over qualified, lacking only the specialisation in the specific thing he wants, but he wants to cover his basics and more – he doesn't just want to be, he want to be the _very best_ he can be. Another thing Sherlock left him with, an inability to settle for second best.

Thirteenth is Mycroft who, without being asked to, without saying a thing, tampers with things. So, when John enters the Initial Crime Scene Investigator Course, no one at the NPIA lifts so much an eyebrow. But it’s been a year and half, and Sherlock is an old scandal, mostly forgotten already, and John Watson could be anybody really – John Watson, Sherlock Holmes's blogger, had been a man in a hat, in a black suit, more of a bodyguard, by the end, than a companion, and John isn't that man anymore. Instead he is a determined man, a little overqualified, somewhat broken but not enough to hinder his work, immediately the favourite of the teachers, and eventually, after nine weeks, a graduate – an official Scenes of Crime Officer.

The fourteenth thing is work – first in Surrey, which isn't all that interesting, mostly petty thefts, burglaries, some domestic disputes and few, very few, crimes of passion. But John is good, he’s too good – his reports are eloquent but succinct, his evidence is clean and clear and neatly marked, he has an eye for things most miss, and his reports, more often than not, solve the cases before the police investigators manage it. Two years after Sherlock's death, London calls John back home –not Met, for which John is secretly grateful because he doesn't want to work with familiar faces. Instead it's the Ministry of Defence that hires him, and even if it's thanks to Mycroft, John doesn't ask.

The fifteenth thing is routine, as it settles on him. His life becomes all about crime scenes, and it's nothing like in Surrey – the MDP is different. It’s wider spread: it covers the whole of the United kingdom, and beyond, and John is, suddenly, their best SOCO. He works in Ireland on Monday, Scotland in Tuesday, spends his Wednesday and Thursday in Cardiff and has barely a breather in London on Friday. And murder is the very least he does – his weekend is spent sorting out the den of some wanna-be terrorists, figuring out their goals and supplies and targets and connections. And on Monday, after barely enough time to sleep, it starts all over again.

Sixteenth is realising his limits, and his own abilities. He's not as good as Sherlock was, never will be, he takes longer, he misses things at first, he gets things wrong. But unlike Sherlock, he has an endless supply of evidence bags and bottles, of memory cards for his several cameras, and he always has a lab at his disposal, even if he has to share it with several other SOCOs, its much better equipped than Bart's. And with stubborn, steady work, John eventually gets _everything_.

The seventeenth thing is recovery, and that happens in stages. His hand stops shaking after some time, and he keeps forgetting his cane when he gets an idea about this or that bit of evidence, and has to rush off to the laboratory just this moment to check it out. He calls on Lestrade more often and they go for a pint – Lestrade is a bit wide eyed about John's new job, but not surprised. John calls on the others too, even Molly and Mrs. Hudson, though she’s like knife in his chest with her big, understanding eyes. He gets a good flat and buys furniture for it, gets a telly with a wide screen and upgrades from a laptop to a desktop – and a new laptop, but that one's for work. At some point, he even manages to get a chair that is _his_ chair and a mug that is _his_ tea mug, and a bathrobe which isn't striped and is much longer than the one Sherlock ruined.

The eighteenth is setting limits. The kitchen remains a kitchen, the living room a living room; John never brings his work into his home. Well, aside from the van and the tool box and the set of clothing he always has ready in case he gets called in the middle of the night, but that's only logical. He doesn't write a blog. He doubts he’ll ever again write a blog.

The nineteenth thing happens when it's been three years. By that time John has been promoted to Director of the MDP's offices of forensic science and suddenly Sherlock is there again, somehow, in John's _laboratory_. John doesn't punch him, though it's a near thing, doesn't hug him, though that's an even nearer thing than the punching. No, instead, he chases Sherlock out of the laboratory because he's tampering with the evidence of the Adair case, and John had just gotten the damned thing sorted out.

The twentieth thing should've been moving back to Baker Street – where Mycroft had kept the flat to Sherlock's liking, much to Mrs. Hudson's constant worry - but John won't. He can't. It took him three years and nineteen steps to get to where he is now, to doing what he finds he really likes to do, and he knows that if Sherlock was there, if he was where Sherlock is, he'd end up losing all that. Sherlock is almost worth it but not quite, and John Watson isn't a blogger anymore.

He does call Sherlock in to consult with _him_ on cases, but that's a given and not really a _thing_ and at that point John's stopped counting. And he does punch Sherlock eventually, but Sherlock had it coming.

 


End file.
